For a start, we don't know much about it. And we may be overly optimistic. Prosperity may be more elusive than we expect.
... Our current travails will eventually end. What do we know about the prospects for long-run prosperity?
The answer is: less than we think.
The long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office, generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades. In particular, productivity — the key driver of growth — is projected to rise at a rate not too different from its average growth since the 1970s. On the other side, however, these projections generally assume that income inequality, which soared over the past three decades, will increase only modestly looking forward.
It’s not hard to understand why agencies make these assumptions. Given how little we know about long-run growth, simply assuming that the future will resemble the past is a natural guess. ...Paul Krugman
But not necessarily a good guess. We don't yet know. We may be in for diminishing returns.
Another economist, Yanis Varoufakis, may well agree with Krugman on long-term prosperity. In the meantime and by way of explanation, the University of Athens economist, half Greek, half Australian, and brilliant, sees the artificiality in the "debt crisis."
There may be a good deal of speculation about what kind of economic future we can expect, but we first need to get beyond the god-awful mess we're allowing our politicians to make in the name of fiscal "responsibility" and capitalism. We are being blamed (and made to pay for) their ignorance. They're setting us up for diminishing returns.
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NPR seems to be the only news outlet now talking in terms of a false/manufactured fiscal crisis. Anyone out there heard it so described in other quarters of the mainstream media?
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Listening to some Fontella Bass cuts, it's hard not to think that pretty much all of us need to focus on following the north star.
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